Achtung! Gerschtompen

Excitement over Mechwarrior Online has been on a cautiously low simmer since last year’s announcement. From the details that have emerged it sounds quite similar to World of Tanks in both gameplay and payment structures, only with Battlemechs rather than tanks as you’d hope, otherwise something would have really gone wrong in the design process. I like World of Tanks, I like Battlemechs, so that’s big robo-thumbs up from me.

An interesting snippet from E3 was Razer announcing a concept controller for the game, the Artemis, finally something to rival the fabled Steel Battalion controller as the holy grail for setting up your own mech cockpit at home; I’d be lying if said I wasn’t tempted, but with Razer charging £120 for a *mouse*, chances are it’ll be cheaper to build a time machine to hop forward to the year 3049 and rip the console out of an actual mech.

More practically Piranha games announced Founders packages for sale yesterday, a chance to pick up some bonus in-game currency and, on the more expensive packages, Founders Mechs. The game will initially launch with North American servers only, but Russ Bullock, president of Piranha Games, posted “Yes you can buy the Founders Package and you will never be blocked from continuing to play on the North American servers. Also if we are able to set up servers in your region you will be given a onetime opportunity to transfer to those regions servers taking everything you own with you.” It’s something of a gamble, but I rather regret not taking up a similar offer in World of Tanks, so I’ll probably bite the bullet (or AC5 shell, as appropriate).

Stabs – I’ve given up on believing any American names are made up since I had a meeting at work with Rustin Sides and a chap called Charles Holt III who introduced himself as “call me Beaver”. Given what ‘beaver’ is slang for over there, I wouldn’t go around asking people to call me one! :)